One on One with Aspen Advisors' Dan Herman

When Dan Herman founded IT/Healthcare consulting firm Aspen Advisors in 2006, he set out to create a firm that would help executives make difficult decisions and manage large-scale technology-enabled projects, particularly on the clinical side, where Aspen strives to help healthcare providers reduce costs and improve patient care. Herman likens the firm's leadership team to a multi-specialty group physician practice, with each bringing a diverse and specific set of skills to the table. The combination of the varied skills of its team and a focus on culture have paid off for the young firm, which has gained plenty of attention, garnering accolades from KLAS and Modern Healthcare, and allowing Aspen to add 23 new clients in 2011 alone. He sat down recently with Consulting One on One to discuss the firm and its new clients.

Consulting: You experienced tremendous growth last year, adding 23 new clients. How much of that do you attribute to what's going on in healthcare and IT right now?

Herman: When I talk to people and tell them what I do, they always say "business must be booming." My response is always, business has been really good for the last 30 years in Healthcare/IT. I think over the last several years with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Meaningful Use and ICD-10 and consolidation in the industry, there's clearly been an uptick in the last three years or so. We're certainly seeing lots of demand right now around the push for meaningful use of Electronic Health Records, both in the hospital environment as well as a business environment.